I was going to say minority small business loans but I don't see them listed here, weird:

The 8(a) Business Development Program assists in the development of small businesses owned and operated by individuals who are socially and economically disadvantaged, such as women and minorities. The following ethnic groups are classified as eligible: Black Americans; Hispanic Americans; Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, or Native Hawaiians); Asian Pacific Americans (persons with origins from Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Japan, China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Laos, Cambodia (Kampuchea), Vietnam, Korea, The Philippines, U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (Republic of Palau), Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Samoa, Macao, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru); Subcontinent Asian Americans (persons with origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands or Nepal).

Well from living among them (kind of) in the Middle East and knowing lots in the US, I can tell you it's a pretty nepotistic culture. Also very zero-sum and cutthroat. They are mercilessly cheap as FUCK too and know how to play Western sensibilities like a fiddle. Some writer once said the Arab mind is like a camcorder, passively taking in the surface of everything with deadly precision.

Interesting. Is that why they can make in in America but their countries are SPS? Do you think Hispanics will fall for Arab merchants in the same way white ppl do? Or will Arabs have to compete against Hispanic owned shops?

I think it gets more complicated when you consider back home vs. the ones who emigrated. The US has received mostly Arab Christians. Arab Muslims have been a rarity until the last few years, really (US Muslims are either blacks or South Asians, though it is changing now).

A lot of the M.E. is shit because of Islam, of course, and the instability in politics, property rights and such that it engenders. A fratricidal religion. And the emigrants tended to be Christians who were often employed as intermediaries and merchants. To survive in that situation for centuries takes cunning. Even TODAY in Egypt, Lebanon, and such, the Christians dominate a lot of the private sector.

I don't think SoCal Hispanics are anywhere near as crafty. I have a lot more experience with Hispanic merchants in New York and I observed that their businesses are so god-awful you can tell they're fronts for extorting SBA loans, Section 8, etc. These places run off welfare money. Always a big rush of customers around the first of the month... guess why. But that hasn't been leveraged into the business empires you see with Arabs.

Here in SoCal, Hispanics prefer to spend their money in Hispanic-owned businesses. You see mostly Arab stores in White or Black neighborhoods. Arabs have a really good way of getting White and Black clientele; but Hispanics in SoCal feel like Arabs engage in unethical business practices and try to swindle them out of their money.

But you're right in that Hispanics aren't as good merchants as Arabs. But I think one reason why Arabs are so successful in business is because they are involved in scams. Like literal money laundering and pyramid schemes and racketeering. I've personally seen this myself.

That has happened so many times here in Orange County and Los Angeles.

There was a scam by Arabs who would be involved in a car accident among themselves on purpose. Then they would get their insurance to pay them for their "injuries" when in reality they didn't receive a single scratch during the accident. It's all fraud. I think with the internet, these ppl will get shut down since ppl will post reveiws online about certain business or groups in a city.

Immigrants in general tend to start businesses because their situation naturally lends itself to hustle. You have the urge to make the most of your situation, plus nobody will hire you except for peanut wages, so 'business owner' is just the default option. Indians and Asians do the same thing, except not at quite the same rate, because there's always that huge segment of Indian/Asian immigrants who are gunning for the ivy league school thing. Arabs aren't as academic as those groups so they just go all in on the immigrant store owner schtick and try to make the most of it.